The country-mans recreation, or The art of [brace] planting, graffing, and gardening, [brace] in three books. The first declaring divers waies of planting, and graffing, and the best times of the year, with divers commodities and secrets herein, how to set or plant with the root, and without the root; to sow or set pepins or curnels, with the ordering thereof, also to cleanse your grafts and cions, to help barren and sick trees, to kill worms and vermin, and to preserve and keep fruit; how to plant and proin your vines, and to gather and presse your grape; to cleanse and mosse your trees, to make your cider and perry, with many other secret practises which shall appear in the table following. The second treateth of the hop-garden, with necessary instructions for the making and maintenance thereof, ... with some directions for tabaco. Whereunto is added, The expert gardener, containing divers necessary and rare secrets belonging to that art, ... hereunto is likewise added the Art of angling.

Of Hilling and Hills.

NOw you must begin to make your hills, and for the better doing thereof, you must prepare a tool of Iron fashioned somewhat like to a Coopers Addes, but not

so much bowing, neither so narrow at the head, and therefore likest to the nether part of a shovell, the poll whereof must be made with a round hole to receive a helve, like to the helve of a mattock, and in the powl also a nail hole must be made to fasten it to the helve.

This helve should bow somewhat like to a Sithe, or to the steale of a Sithe, and it must be little more than a yard long.

[illustration] depiction of a hill-making tool

The helve should be straight at the upper end.

With this tool you may pare away the grasse, which groweth in the spaces betwixt the hills, and with the same also you may take your hills, and pull them down when time requireth.

Some think it impertinent and not necessary to make hills the first year, partly because their distrust of this years pro∣fit qualifieth their diligence in this behalf, and partly for that they think, that the principall root prospereth best, when there be no new roots of them forced and maintained. But experience confuteth both these conjectures, for by indu∣stry, the first years profit will be great, and thereby also the principall sets much amended, as their prosperity in the se∣cond year will plainly declare.

But in this work, you must be both painfull and curious, as wherein confisteth the hope of your gains, and the successe of your work. For the greater in quantity you make your hills, the more in number you shall have of your Hops, and the fewer weeds on your ground, the more Hops upon your poles.

In confideration whereof I say, your labour must be con∣tinuall from this time almost till the time of gathering, in raising your hills, and clearing ground from weeds.

In the first year that you plant your Hop-Garden, sup∣presse not one Cion, but suffer them all to climb up to the poles, for if you should bury or cover all the Springs of any one of your three roots, which you did lately set, the root thereof perisheth, and perhaps out of some one root there

will not proceed above one or two springs, which being bu∣ried, that root I say dyeth, and therefore the more poles are at this time requisite.

After the first year you must not suffer above two or three stalks at the most to grow up to one pole, but put down and bury all the rest.

Howbeit you may let them all grow till they be four or five foot high at the least, whereby you shall make the better choice of them which you mean to attain, whereby also the principall root will be the better, &c.

Some suffer their Hops to climb•• up to the tops of the poles, and then make the hills at one instant in such quantity as they mean to leave them, which is neither the best, nor the second way.

But if (for expedition) you be driven hereunto, begin soon∣er (that is to say) when the Hops be four or five foot long, and afterwards, if leisure shall serve, refresh them again with more earth.

But to make them well, and as they ought to be made, you must immediately after your poles are set, make a little bank or circle round about the outside of them, as a dimension how wide your hill shall be, and as a receptacle to retain and keep moisture, whereof there cannot lightly come too much, so it come from above.

If your Garden be great, by that time that you have made an end of these Circles or Banks, it will be time to proceed further towards the building up of your hills,

Now therefore return again to the place where you be∣gan, or else where you see the Hops highest, and with your tool pare off the uppermost earth from the Allies or spaces between the hills, and lay the same in your Hops, upon and within the circle that you made before, alwayes leaving the same highest of any part of the hill, and so passe through your Garden again and again, till you have raised your hills by little and little, to so great a quantity as is before de∣clared, and look how high your hill is, so long are your new

roots, and the greater your new roots or springs be, the lar∣ger and better your Hops will be

Great and overgrown weeds should not be laid upon the hills, as to raise them to their due quantity, but when with diligence and expedition you passe through your Garden, continually paring away each green thing assoon as it ap∣peareth, you shall do well with the same, and the uppermost mold of your Garden together, to maintain and encrease the substance of your hills, even till they be almost a yard high.

In the first year make not your hill too rathe, left in the do∣ing thereof you oppresse some of those springs which would otherwise have appeared out of the ground.

It shall not be amisse now and then to passe through your Garden, having in each hand a forked wand, directing aright such Hops as decline from the Poles, but some instead of the said forked wands, use to stand upon a stool, and do it with their hands.